Privacy Policy and Information
Your Privacy is Important to Us
At Peace Hills Trust Company we are committed to protecting your privacy and safeguarding your information. While the Internet is revolutionizing the way that we do business — providing convenient access to financial services from your place of business — we also recognize that it may bring legitimate concerns about Privacy and Security.
This Privacy Statement describes how your organization's information is collected, used and disclosed within our Internet banking site. The Internet banking site is the area of our website that requires you to use your User ID and Personal Access Code (PAC) to enter.
Please note that this statement does not refer to the policies and practices of our public website. Please click here for more information on the policies and practices of our public website
For more information on all of our corporate Privacy Policies and Practices please click here to view our corporate Privacy Code.
Controlled Access to your Information
To ensure that you are the only person accessing your organization's information, we restrict access to the Internet Banking site by requiring that you enter your customer ID and PAC to login. Only you know your PAC. Our employees do not have access to your PAC, and they will not ask you to reveal it. If someone does ask you to provide your PAC to them, we ask that you refuse to do so and contact us immediately.
Transactional Services
By nature, our Internet banking site has many transactional functions such as transfers between accounts and bill payment functions. These transactions are all logged to ensure that your accounts are debited or credited appropriately, and a history of each transaction is available to verify your account. We store and use your transactional information in the same fashion as if you performed the transaction at a branch or any other service channel.
We may also use transactional information for servicing your organization's accounts—for example, billing you for the particular transactions that you perform, or for the services that you use.
Creating a Secure Channel
To create a secure channel between your browser and our server, we use 128-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption, the highest level available. To learn more about 128-bit SSL encryption, and our security policies, please review our security information.
Website Usage Statistics
To continually improve our site, we often collect information about how our Customers are using it. These usage statistics are only viewed in the aggregate—and are never tied to the organization or an individual.
We use this information for purposes such as improving the pages where our Customers are having difficulties, and ensuring that we have the appropriate infrastructure in place to service future needs.
The information collected may include your IP address, your browser type and your operating system, as well as data that is passively generated as you browse the site, such as the number and types of pages visited, and the length of time spent per page and on the site overall.
Our use of Cookies
We also use a key web technology called cookies. A cookie is a small information token that sits on your computer. As you use the Internet banking site, cookies are passed back and forth between our server and your browser. While cookies can be used for a variety of reasons, we only use cookies where they are of benefit to our Customers.
Specifically, we use two kinds of cookies—session cookies and persistent cookies. A session cookie exists only for the length of your browsing session and is deleted when you close your browser. A persistent cookie is a cookie that stays on your computer after you close your browser. A persistent cookie may or may not expire on a given date.
We use a session cookie to maintain the integrity of your Internet banking session. With each page that you visit, the cookie is passed back and forth between our server and your browser. We use the cookie to distinguish your session from the many others that may be happening at the same time. Our session cookies never store any confidential account information and or account balances.
Most recent browser versions allow the user to set some level of control over which cookies are accepted and how your browser uses them. Many browsers will allow you to accept cookies from only known, reliable sites that you select such as the Internet banking site. If you are concerned about cookies, we encourage you to upgrade your browser to a recent version and review the Help section of your browser to learn more about it's specific control features.
Logout Button
To ensure that someone cannot access your personal information, always exit the Internet banking site using the logout button located at the top of every page. When you exit using the logout button, we delete your session cookie so that your session cannot be resumed unless your User ID and PAC are re-entered.
Automatic Session Time-outs
In the event that you leave your computer without logging out, the Internet banking site has been designed to end your session automatically if our system detects that you haven't provided any instructions or used the browser buttons to navigate for several minutes. To restart the session, you will need to provide your User ID and PAC again.
General email is not secure since it passes through many points on its route from you to us. If you are using general email to communicate with us, we strongly recommend that you do not include financial information (such as account numbers) within the email as we cannot guarantee its confidentiality en route to us.
When you email us your comments, questions or instructions, you provide us your email address and we use it to correspond with you. We then store your email and our replies to you so that we can refer to them in future.
We will not provide your email address to anyone outside of Peace Hills Trust. We may use your email address to send you information about financial products or services that we think may be of interest to you. If you do not want us to contact you with product information by email, you may tell us so at any time and we will discontinue the practice.
If you have asked us to provide you with information on a regular basis, or if we email you information about our products or services, you may ask us to remove you from the list at any time. We intend to include instructions to unsubscribe from the list in every mailing, and on the site where you originally subscribed to the list.
Service Partners:
In providing our Internet banking service, we often use external service partners and suppliers to assist us. In performing their duties, these service partners may handle components of your organization's information on our behalf. We ensure through our contracts with these partners that they handle your information with the same standard of care that you have come to expect from us. Our suppliers, like our employees, are bound to maintain your confidentiality and may not use the information for unauthorized purposes.
Links to Other Sites
The Internet banking site may also contain links to other websites or Internet resources. As an example, from time-to-time we may provide links to Microsoft or Netscape to assist you in upgrading your Internet browser. However, Peace Hills Trust Company has no responsibility or liability for or control over these other websites or Internet resources or their collection, use and disclosure of your organization's information. Always review the Privacy Statements of the sites that you are viewing.
Contact Us
We welcome any questions or concerns about our Internet banking Privacy Statement, or the practices of this site. Please contact us by email, or in writing at the following address:
Vice President, Information Services
Peace Hills Trust Company
Peace Hills Trust Tower
10011 - 109 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 3S8
780-421-1606
customer_support@peacehills.com
Protecting Your Privacy—We're in it together
As we continue to expand our online banking service to serve you better, and as new Internet technologies become available, we may need to amend this Privacy Statement at anytime, with our without notice to reflect changes in functionality and practice. Please check this Privacy Statement regularly for changes.